


visions from windows

by SHAYCH___xxvii



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: 15daysofFATT, COLLABOREIGHTEEN BABY
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-18 16:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13685883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SHAYCH___xxvii/pseuds/SHAYCH___xxvii
Summary: c/w works for 15 days of fatt





	1. dance

**Author's Note:**

> art by Finn @the_erlkonig and fic by Han @mercutioes

**Day 1: Dance**

 

They're seventeen and sitting on the floor of Mako's dorm room, drunk off some mystery booze that a friend of a friend of a friend of Ted's managed to sneak into the Institute.  Mako's feeling warm and fuzzy and blurry and Tower must be too because the walls of the mesh are melting and shifting with every stray thought.  Tower's got a flush on his cheeks and Mako's decidedly not looking, he _isn’t_.  He takes another drink, focusing in on the wall as he shudders from the sour-sharp taste.

“Hey!” Tower exclaims, and Mako realizes he’s switched the music with a stray thought, from something with a thumping bass to a sweet sugar-pop track off his guilty favorites playlist.

“Oh!  Sorry,” he says, unconsciously lifting a hand to switch it back, though he doesn’t really need to move to do it.  Tower stops him, and the touch of their hands makes Mako stop in his tracks.

“It’s fine,” he says, grinning.  “I like her music, too.”  Mako stares.

“ _Really?_ ”

“Yeah!  It’s _so_ catchy, dude.”  Tower closes his eyes behind his glasses and leans back on his elbows and hums along.  Something clenches in Mako’s chest that makes it hard for him to breathe.  He wants… he… he doesn’t know _what_ he wants.

He takes another drink.

And then they’re seventeen (they’re seventeen?) and it’s prom but this time Aria Joie’s not playing through the speakers, she’s his classmate and she’s at prom too and she’s nudging him towards his friend in the armor and something’s off, off, _off_.

But what _isn’t_ off is the way Tower shoots him that lopsided smile and his eyes crinkle at the corners.

“Wanna dance?” he offers, and Mako swallows hard.

_I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here I shouldn’t be here I shouldn’t --_

“Sure, bud,” he says, smiling as bright as he can, letting Tower sweep him into a spin and a step-two-three, weaving in and out of the other students.  The mesh blurs at the edges and Mako can’t tell whether it’s his own fucked-up brain or the fact that this world is all but collapsing, but Tower… he’s real.  He has to be -- warm and a little bit sweaty and earnest and so goddamn _tall_ and Mako can’t help but laugh and laugh in his arms, feet barely brushing the floor.

It feels good.  It feels _off_.  It feels right.

 


	2. sleep

**Day 2: Sleep**   


 

He reaches, reaches, reaches and it never gets any easier, the stretching and strain and sweaty, pained desperation.  The gold of the orb, pristine and pure in the inky void of shrapnel and stars.

Addax’s face mirrors his -- betrayal and anger and determination and  _ so much fear. _

There’s nothing he can say but he tries anyways, futile, and he snatches the orb and he jumps back --

//

He reaches, reaches, reaches and this time he feels something bend and crack.  He’s not sure if it’s his own body or the hundreds of screaming, dying machines around him.  

The desperation hits him like a physical blow, space closing in, and if he can just --

//

He reaches and is hit suddenly by all the things he could have done, every possibility he squandered.  They pierce his skull like thick needles, aching and sharp and myriad.

He meets Addax’s eyes and has a vision, sudden and clear, of what could have been -- of kisses stolen against the side of his mech, of consolation and heat and tenderness and instead here they are, diametrically opposed and yet orbiting still, like binary stars.  His hand outstretched.  It’s time, there’s never enough  _ time -- _

//

He reaches, reaches, reaches and the orb is cold and bright and solid in his hands and a small, persistent voice in the back of his head wonders whether he’s making the biggest mistake of his life.

It sounds like Ibex.  Why does it sound like  _ Ibex? _

//

He reaches, reaches, reaches and --

//

He reaches --

//

He reaches and reaches and Addax’s face is closer than before, close enough to touch.  Close enough to kiss, he thinks in his wild, fevered frenzy, though there’s glass and a divine and space and the orb still between them, and why does he feel like time’s running  _ out -- _

//

He reaches and the stars streak around him like they’re _moving faster than light, his body is pulling tauter, about to snap, Addax is saying_ _something and Jace can’t tell if it’s_ please _or_ help _or_ goodbye _\--_

 

Waking up is sudden and unpleasant.  He gasps, coughing and spluttering and with the sickly-cold slide of adrenaline in his veins.  His eyes are blurry, too-sensitive even in the low light of the room, and he can’t focus on anything but he knows that _ there’s someone here _ .  No-one’s supposed to be here but Orth and this silhouette at his bedside is too tall and too svelte and --

“Welcome back, Captain Rethal.”

 


	3. metamorphosis

**Day 3: Metamorphosis**

 

Candidate, it is 0400 hours.

“I can’t sleep,” Sokrates shoots back, shrugging on a thick, baggy sweater.  Sokrates senses that Integrity is preparing to release a flood of melatonin in their hypothalamus --

Would you like me to --

“ _No._ ”  Something about the idea is viscerally sickening to them in this moment, unnatural and wrong.  They pad out into the hallway of the ancestral Pelagios house, bare feet on cold marble floors.  Integrity gives the impression of a sigh.

“Sorry,” they say, “I just… I need…”  They make a frustrated noise.  How do you explain to a machine the feeling of being awake and alone in the small hours of the morning, the peace and loneliness and quiet of it?  It’s not _logical_ but it’s important.

Sokrates moves through the house on autopilot, muscle memory from growing up here.  They had trouble sleeping then, too, though for different reasons entirely -- they were a child practically made of ebullient, nervous energy and parents who weren’t sure what to do with them.  Integrity twitches at the memories.  Two rights, a left down a narrow stone hallway -- dusty from disuse -- and here, a crude wooden door.  They yank on it, but it seems to be stuck.  They sigh.

“Can you --”

Integrity transmits the sense-impression of a nod, reinforcing the cords of their muscles and positioning them at the precise angle to get the best leverage.  The door flies open with a whoosh and a long creak.  Sokrates shivers at the rush of musty, cold air from the passageway beyond.  They can _feel_ Integrity retract itself from their limbs, an unnerving slip-slide along their muscular tracts, and they wonder if they’ll ever get used to what they are now.

You haven’t changed, Candidate.  You’re still whole.

“Yeah, but I didn’t used to have a fucking Divine under my skin,” they mutter.  They start climbing the narrow stone stairs, up and up until the passageway opens out to the roof of the house.

Why are we here?

“You know why.”  Bare feet along the parapets, moonlight and starlight on marble.  A familiar path.  Integrity sifts through their memories.

You came here as a child.  You couldn’t sleep.

“Yeah.”  Sokrates finally finds what they’re looking for -- a little alcove in the shadow of an ornately-carved tower with a ledge perfect for sitting on.  It looks out over the Apostolosian shoreline, moonlit waters as far as they can see.

“I used to bring Cass up here,” they say, hopping onto the ledge and swinging their feet, heels drumming against the stone.  “They used to have these nightmares.  Sometimes we’d both be awake and we’d come up here.”

You worry about them.

Sokrates snorts.  “I worry about everyone.  It’s my job, now.”

They aren’t everyone.

Silence.  The rhythm of their feet hitting the marble.

It’s not a bad thing, Candidate.

A pause.  Integrity reconsiders.

 Sokrates.  It’s why I chose you.

“Joke’s on both of us, then, huh?”

Integrity remains silent for long minutes.  Sokrates can feel their processes whirring like an itch in the back of their mind, like an ache in their newly-metallic spine and tingling in their steel-protected lungs.  They let their feet go still and are struck by the fact that they don’t feel the overpowering need to keep them in motion -- their fingers don’t fidget the way they used to, all that nervous energy regulated and used by the machine fused into every fiber of their being.  They’ll never be alone again.   _They’ll never be_ alone _again._

You can’t think of it like that.  That’s not what candidacy _is_.

“Then what _is_ it?” Sokrates spits, and the vitriol in their voice surprises even them.  “There isn’t a single goddamn part of me that you aren’t _in_.”

Full systemic integration means that we are functionally one being.  It’s different with every Candidate.  We’re new, unlike anything that’s existed before.  You don’t… I…

Integrity sounds unsure and it’s so strange -- a Divine, _stuttering --_ that it makes the tension in Sokrates’ back and shoulders flow out of them in a rush.  They laugh.  They let their legs bounce again.

“So you’re saying that we’re both still figuring this out,” they say, and Integrity gives them the impression of a laugh -- not a vocalization, but simply the sense of it.  Sokrates sighs, looks out over the ocean, on and on over moonlit waves to the dark horizon.  “I can live with that,” they say.  “I’m pretty good at figuring things out.”  Integrity hums.

The sun begins to rise, rays of pink and gold piercing the long line of the horizon.  Integrity and its candidate watch as it ascends, warming Sokrates’ upturned face and the marble under their feet.

 


	4. vacation

**Day 4: Vacation**

 

It’s almost like putting on armor, Aria thinks.  On with the floppy hat and the huge sunglasses, the bathing suit that’s very much outside of her normal color palette.  Tie her hair up so it looks shorter than normal.

Jamil meets her at their designated spot in the dome, synthetic sand and synthetic sea as far as the eye can wander.  Jamil’s done up much the same, her lavender hair mostly hidden under the floppy brim of her hat.

“Hey!” Aria calls, waving her over, and Jamil answers her with a tired grin.

“Hey, yourself,” Jamil replies, pulling her in for a hug.  “It’s good to see you.”

They lay out their beach blanket near the water, under the warmth of the artificial sun.  There are more people around than they’d like, and Aria sets up the umbrella to block the views of as many beachgoers as possible.

“Paranoid?”

“Maybe a little,” Aria says.  She does another scan around -- she knows that once one person recognizes them, the word will spread fast.  Jamil sighs.

“Relax, sweetheart.”  Jamil reaches up to pull off Aria’s hat.  She grins at Aria and Aria can’t help but grin back.

“How daring,” she teases, leaning back on her hands.  “Anyone could see us like this.”

“Who cares,” Jamil shoots back.  “Even we’re allowed to take a goddamn vacation.”  Aria looks around despite herself, and unsurprisingly, there are a number of people who have obviously recognized them.  They’re hard to miss, the pop star and the journalist in shades of brown and pink and purple.  A few of them point and whisper and as much as Aria just wants the day  _ off _ , she can’t help but preen a little bit under the attention.  Jamil laughs, nudging her shoulder.  Her skin is warm from the sun, and Aria finds it impossible not to steal a glance down the line of Jamil’s chest, the swell of her stomach and the curve of her thighs.

“Don’t fuck with me, you  _ love _ being famous,” Jamil says, smile crinkling the corners of her eyes.  It’s familiar, this back-and-forth between the two of them, affectionate and comforting.  They hear a camera click not too far away, and Jamil rolls her eyes.

“God, at least  _ try _ to be subtle about it,” she grumbles, and Aria giggles.  Jamil’s pout is unfairly cute.

“Hey,” Aria says, “if we’re gonna be on camera, might as well give them a good show.”  Jamil quirks an eyebrow, lips spreading into an impish grin.

“Seems only fair,” she replies, leaning in close.  Her eyelashes flutter, long and plum-colored, and Aria can feel her cheeks heating and her stomach swooping.

If she were paying attention, she’d catch a few gasps and passers-by whispering to each other, but she absolutely  _ isn’t _ .  All she can focus on is how soft Jamil’s lips are under hers and how the synthetic breeze tosses strands of her hair and the soft, sweet noise Jamil makes into her mouth.   _ They don’t do this enough _ , Aria thinks.

Jamil pulls back with a giggle, fond smile across her face.  Her lipgloss is smeared, and Aria reaches up to swipe her thumb along the line of Jamil’s bottom lip.

“You’re trouble, Joie,” Jamil teases, kissing the pad of Aria’s thumb.  Aria giggles.

“I try my best.”

 


	5. blades

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to andi for making diego rose the fuckiest character in all of counter/weight, amen

**Day 5: Blades**

 

Diego Rose is nothing if not well-armed.

Handgun, rifle.  Utility knife in one pocket, switchblade in the other, butterfly knife in a thigh holster.  Clip a retractable bayonet blade to the rifle stock.  Never caught off-guard, never taken by surprise.   _ He took down five of them before they got him.   _ A well-honed weapon.

“Oh.  Sorry, I was just…”

Diego realizes he’s been glaring at himself in the shiny metal of the armory’s rack.  He schools his face into its default arrangement, a sharp grin half-hidden beneath the hexagonal mask.

“Augustus.  Buddy.  You just about ready?”

“Yeah, I.  Yeah.”  Augustus’ flight suit is similar to Diego’s tactical gear but a little more streamlined, a little less bulky.  Same patchwork though.  Augustus looks nervous (though that’s nothing new, and honestly, it’s what Diego likes so much about him).  “Captain Thorne sent me to talk to you, actually.”  Diego’s grin freezes.

“Did he.”

“He, uh…”  Augustus licks his lips.  Diego watches despite himself.  “He wanted me to tell you, uh… ‘Keep your head on the job, Rose’.  His words, not mine.”  Diego stares at him coolly until Augustus starts shifting on his feet.

“And he couldn’t -- he sent  _ you _ instead of telling me himself…  _ why?” _

“I don’t know!  I’m just doing what he told me!”

That’s it.  That’s the breaking point, the sharp snap.  Diego Rose has got a lot of patience but he’s only human.  It doesn’t even  _ matter _ that he knows that Thorne is testing him, is toying with him the way he toys with this pilot but it’s not the  _ same _ , it’s not  _ fair. _

Augustus yelps when Diego shoves him up against the armory wall with a forearm against his throat, jostling a shelf full of rifle sights and sending them clattering to the floor around them.

“Listen, Foxwell,” Diego spits, getting in close and letting the mask fall away from the side of his scarred, gnarled face.  “Thorne might trust you, but it takes a lot more than looking sweet and following orders to earn  _ my _ trust.”

“What --”

“I know firsthand,” Diego says, grin a sharp slash across his face.  “The captain likes a pretty, obedient right hand man, and sure, you qualify.  But between you and me?   _ I got there first _ .”

Augustus shoves him back, hard.  His face is twisted in anger, but Diego catches the flush on his cheek, all down his neck.  He wants to see how far it goes.  He wants to follow it with his teeth.

“I don’t know what you think is going on, but --”

“Stop kidding yourself,” Diego growls, “I know exactly what’s going on.  Don’t think for a  _ second _ you’re being subtle.”  This time he doesn’t shove but backs Augustus up slowly instead, the slow stalk of a predator.  The pilot startles when his back hits the wall, eyes wide.  He opens his mouth to speak but Diego puts a finger to his lips -- a mockery of the first time they met in the medbay with the threat of pain and an offer, accepted.

“You’ve still got a lot to prove, Foxwell,” he murmurs, leaning in close, gratified to see Augustus’ flush darken further.  “ _ So prove it to me _ .”

He leaves Augustus there in the armory.  The weights of his combat boots thunk on the hallway floors with furious intent.  He and the Captain are going to have a  _ chat _ .

 


	6. fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're really sorry

**Day 6: Fire**

 

 


End file.
